Happy New Year!

It was suppose to be the most snow in 10 years, but we only go like 2". Sucks. I was all psyched up to go wheeling in the snow this weekend. It's almost all melted now. Still a little on the ground. Maybe up on the mountains it will still be crazy.

Jane it taking down the tree today. Christmas is over. Tonight is new-years! woo woo! We have some fireworks to set off to rattle in the new year. fun fun fun.

So my new blue Samurai is sold. The guy will pick it up next month or so. $900. I have to swap the engine and get it running. Not too big of a deal, except it's really cold outside. I'm going to have to get started looking for another one. I still need a frame. I'm wanting to pay like $200 for one. That would be cool. There is a guy that wants to buy the body from me, so I guess I can pay a bit more and get one with a nice body.

Next week I really need to crack down on work. Too many distractions in 2004. I need to get our new software out the door before Feb. 1st. That's going to be some serious coding. I'm going to shut off the phone and the email and just code 18 hours a day.

Welp, I better get started.

Hi!

It's been a great week. Lot's of stuff going on. I'll try to catch you up.

Randy came up for Christmas. It was fun. On Christmas eve I bought a Samurai from a lady down the road. I was going to part it out and use the frame for my rock crawler project, but since it was in good condition I decided to sell it.

A kid in Arizona is probably going to buy it from me this weekend coming up. He is 15 and this will be his first car. He wants to build it up real nice. I'm kinda glad he is going to get it. I'd like to see it get build up and looking real nice.

Christmas eve we had tri-tip steak for dinner! Woo woo. It was very very good. Then on Christmas day we all slept in. Jane's parents came over and woke us all up so we could open presents. That's a bit backwards. ;-) We all got up and open presents. It was real nice to have the family around and all. I just wish my dad was there too. All well.

We had turkey, stuffing, mashed potato's, and everything else for Christmas dinner. The turkey was cooked perfectly. I've had turkey sandwiches every since.

The day after Christmas we went wheeling. I talked Johnny into going over the mountain into hidden valley. It was great. Johnny was so sure that he could not get his Jeep into there. But we blazed right on through. Even found a better way over the off-camber parts. It was really fun to get Johnny into there. I took my video camera to get some vids, but my battery was dead. I guess I have to turn it off to keep it charged. I didn't know it would run it down when it's turned on and plugged in.

Randy left today because he has to work tomorrow. We all just chilled the rest of the day. I did a little work and stuff. I'm going to get back into the grind until New Years.

Oh, and Jane's power supply on the Cube died yesterday. Sucks, but a new one is on it's way.

Wow, here it is Thursday already. Crazy. Time sure does fly by. Talking about time just flying by, I ran out of propane today. Well, I'm not out, I'm just low, like under zero low. Gesh. I just had it filled....a month ago. oops. I need to check the calendar more often.

So my propane is down to zero and I have to wait until monday before I can get any more. That's going to be a problem. Oops.

Lucky I have that 25 gallon tank that I can patch in until I get more propane. ;-)

I signed up a new customer yesterday and today their computer is saturating the entire bandwidth for my ISP. I called them and they had no idea what it was. It was running for like 12 hours before I figured out who it was.

It's either two things. A virus or a p2p app. I really hate MS Windows.

I'm working on getting NoCat working again. This time I'm going to use IMAP as the authentication type. It will check the email server to see if a valid login is available. This should work I hope.

Right now I'm making secure SSL keys for the auth server. It's taking forever to create the key. I don't think it's working. Stupid stuff. Why can't it be as easy as M0n0wall. All I want is a login.

Shesh.

Why why why why why doesn't it work. NoCatAuth just does not work!!!!!!! ArG!

The next thing to do is NAT the entire wireless then each relay to get m0n0wall working.

Customer -> NAT Wireless -> NAT firewall -> Internet.

I can't figure out a way to bridge two wireless adapters. I try but it does nothing.

I don't know what to do. I'm going to bed.

SPAM email is getting to be like TV commercials. Every 15 minutes you get 10 or so SPAM emails. They are the same ones you just got 15 minutes ago. Over and over I get this stupid Rolex SPAM email. It's driving me crazy. If I could get to their site, I would get the contact info and check out how to sue them for wasting bandwidth. I hear that as an ISP I can get $2 per email they have sent to my system. I should start doing that.

In this day, I can't see how SPAM is still profitable. People, quit buying from companies that use SPAM!!!

Yesterday around noon the relay at Pipers totally failed. I had to pull it off the tower and setup a new one. I pulled the hardware from my firewall to use. So now it's back up and running. It seems to be running very well also. It will reboot just fine, it detects problems, and it stays running. So, hopefully this is the end of the bad luck at the Pipers relay.

So the WRAP isn't really that good I guess. Or Pebble doesn't run on it very well. The Soekris system seems to work with Pebble Linux much better.

Now I have this WRAP that will run m0n0wall just fine but not Pebble. So it's kinda useless to me. Anyone want it for $150 or a trade for a Soekris board with three ethernet ports?

I finally revert back to the old software and now the box has a reboot lockup problem. ARG! Will it never end? So I'm trying to figure out why it locks up when I reboot. It boots fine if I cold boot it (power cycle). Pebble Linux on WRAP 2c with a 128MB CF SanDisk.

Oh, I finally found a use for m0n0wall. Since I can't use it on the relays I stuck it between my wireless and my LAN. It's running and a bridging firewall. I've setup rules for the network to slow down p2p file sharing and maximize bandwidth for web and email. That should help out most customers. It's also blocking outbound port 25 except to my email server. This way that stupid spam virus wont get me on the black lists.

Things are looking up in one way at least. All I need to do is figure out this lock up problem on the relay and I'm good to go.

Crossing my figure on the firewall...